It’s just a pond in a bucolic setting. Except that it isn’t. This is the pond I’ve commuted past daily for seven years, four of those years with Tyler as my driving companion. For some reason, this pond was a topic of conversation each time we passed by.
We’d remark on the ducks and the geese and, on one occasion, the fox we spotted. We’d comment on the encroaching algae that choked it each spring into summer, and then watch it finally clear up after the first cold snap of late fall and ultimately freeze in the winter, to repeat the same cycle year after year.
After saying my final goodbye to Tyler, driving by this pond became especially painful, something I had to do twice every day. I could hear the echoes of his voice each time, but I craved the real thing.
Earlier this week, the pond once again came into view, and… nothing. Just nothing. I was struck immediately by this. The pond was… just a murky body of water. For the first time in over three years, my mind processed the sight and made no association to Tyler.
No pain, no echoes, simply a backdrop to daily scenery.
I thought about this the rest of the way in to work. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this new development. I understood what this meant, this particular pond becoming no different to me than any other.
It was similar, yet different, to another incident this week. A song came on the radio. The opening lyrics had always amused Tyler, and without fail he’d crack the same joke each time. For the first time in three years, as the song began I recalled Tyler’s silliness and… smiled. Soon after that the tears still fell, but first, I smiled.
A pond that no longer triggers a painful association. A song that bestows a smile instead of weeping.
I think about my grief. A lot. I wonder if I’m doing it right. I wonder what it will feel like as more time passes and it alters. This week I noticed the adjustments I was making and felt no small amount of panic.
Whereas being able to smile at a fond memory feels like progress, being able to dismiss a painful symbol like the pond feels like I am losing a critical connection.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but I haven’t longed for a release from the pain. The pain is a tether to my child. It is a silent but demanding partner in my life. It drains me, exhausts me, feeds off my soul. But feeling it means I am feeling Tyler. Feeling him deeply.
I guess I’ve been assuming that pain and I would remain grim companions until the day I so long for comes, and I am reunited with Tyler eternally.
But this past week, even with the emotion of another looming Mother’s Day, my dour associate deserted me as I traveled past that pond with no thought of Tyler.
I will contemplate this today, this fourth Mother’s Day without my child. As the pain lessens – and I know it must – I am faced with finding other ways to preserve a connection to my boy, this impossibly precious son who ushered me into motherhood.
I’m not there yet, but perhaps soon, the tether between Tyler and me will be fashioned increasingly by memories that make me smile, and less by pain. And maybe someday soon, that won’t feel as wrong to me as it does on this day.